As part of a new preventive health initiative, Arab men can sign up to receive interactive cell-phone text messages in Arabic to encourage and help them to kick the smoking habit.

Launched by the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, the service is part of a free program entitled SMS Quit. It is aimed at the 44 percent of Arab men who smoke–a population that has the highest smoking rate in Israel and, as a result, the shortest life expectancy. A Braun study, conducted a year ago, found that 30 percent of participants in a Hebrew-language SMS program stopped smoking for at least three months and that smokers were pleased with the program.

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